Yearly Archives: 2011

"You expect me to believe popups can be useful?" In a word, yes. Although it may seem counterintuitive because "everyone hates popups," there is truth to the statement that popup e-mail opt-ins can be useful for certain businesses. Perhaps there are individuals who visit your website all the time, and are active on the message boards and in entering article comments, but somehow have never signed up for your valuable e-mail list. This could be due to ad or banner blindness, a less-than-flawless site design, or a lack of incentive.

First the good news: we conservatives do not completely stink at social networking. In fact, in certain cases, we are actually pretty good at social networking. Take, for instance, the last mid-term elections, which took place in the November of 2010, in which our side pretty much swept the field.

True, much of our success can simply be attributed to a widespread rejection of the policies of Obama and his Hollywood overlords, but a lot of our success can also be attributed to our superior use of Twitter and other social media technology.

Think back to your days in high school for a moment. Do you remember the popular kids in your class? Why did they always seem to attract the most attention? Were they good looking, funny, smart, athletic, or controversial? Did they offer something unique and buzz-worthy? Whatever they did have to offer, many of the kids in school either wanted it and/or looked up to it.

These same exact principles can be applied to blogging and, more specifically, your blog site. When you are successful at creating a popular blog you really do become the "cool kid on the block."

Social networking has become a virtual requirement for today's entrepreneur and small business owner, both online and "brick and mortar" alike. For many individuals it is a small sacrifice to make; especially since participating on social networks can be quite enjoyable, entertaining, and financially lucrative.

That being said, as with the saying "there are two sides to every story", so to is there with social media. The bad news is that it is possible to lose a job over, or because of, social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Four Square.

In the war for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, voters were left with a difficult choice between political upstart Barack Obama or former first lady and New York senator Hillary Clinton.

For the most part, both democratic candidates agreed on the major domestic, social, and foreign policy issues. This, in turn, caused many registered Democratic primary voters to scratch their heads and, subsequently, care little about which democratic candidate actually won the nomination so long as the current administration's policies would be altered going forward.